This paper explores the relationship between sexworker activism and HIV-related discourse in Bangladesh. Both sex worker activism and HIV prevention initiatives adopt pro-sex-work perspectives that emphasise individual and collective agency. The sex work movement attempted to transform sex workers’ identity from that of ‘fallen women’ to that of ‘ordinary worker’. However, by participating in HIV prevention programmes, sex workers failed to contest the imagery of themselves as ‘vectors’ of HIV. In this way, they were unwittingly complicit in reproducing their identity as ‘polluting others’. Influenced by a rights-based approach, non-governmental organisations have largely undertaken programmes of empowerment for sex workers seeking to reduce the transmission of HIV. Most such work has involved interventions at the individual level, focusing on the promotion of condoms, awareness of safer sex, the distribution of clean needles and syringes and the provision of clinic-based health-care services. HIV risk is seen as requiring a ‘technical fix’ such that, if the individual behaviour of sex workers can be altered, then HIV transmission can be prevented. What this framework does not take into account is the fact that sex workers live their lives as part of broader power and community structures and that in countries such as Bangladesh, the choices they make are rarely, ifever, free. Rather, their actions are shaped by structural factors, as well as by notions of purity and pollution.1
1. Sultana H. Sex worker activism, feminist discourse and HIV in Bangladesh. Culture, Health & Sexuality 2015;17(6):777-788. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2014.990516. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691058.2014.990516